In this video, with knowledge learned, and lore uncovered, we revisit one of our earliest theories concerning the Signal that woke HADES. Could the transmission that would lead to GAIA’s destruction be connected to her own sub-function? And could this be connected to the plot of Forbidden West? The evidence may surprise you!
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What if the Purge in Apollo caused a glitch when it tried to teach the new humans but couldn't and that was the transmission gia received
I believe that the storms and vegetation are not a natural event. It seems to me that Vast Silver has spent a lot of time studying the worst of humans while living on the internet. Did it misunderstand the horror movies it was interested in discussing? We know that it's AI was too advanced for its data set. Before Gaia, the only other AI that advanced was C.Y.A.N. that emotion made her vulnerable to hepaestus.
Vast Silver may think the new humans are the main threat to everything that matters to it and might destroy the biosphere to balance an equation
the only real sticking point I see against this theory is that HADES was not the only subfunction effected by the signal. There's no reason why all the other subfunctions would become self-aware and chaotic. They were still connected to GAIA's control, which is why HADES might still have been able to reserve terraform if it got into command control, but the subfunctions were never designed to be AIs. That was an effect of the mysterious signal and not ever hinted to be part of the HADES protocol.
What I don't get is why Hades wasn't used to destroy the Faro Robots. He's supposed to be create a clean slate protocol, that would set the world back to a point where life was extinct, so that Gaia would be able to restart the experiment of terraforming and repopulation again. So basically, a doomsday weapon that could wipe the world blank with its power. Once Hades is done, Gaia could start her terraforming without having to worry about the Faro Robots activating again.
Great video!
The statement by Sylens clearly states…."Masters that sent the signal that woke you." That cannot be taken to be Tate as Tate wasn't alive. That Signal referred here is according to Sylens, sent by a Master. I believe it's more of a Vast silver taking control, sending Hades the data required for him to de-seat Gaia, rather than Sylens being so curious to know about Tate.
This is a cool theory, but it's obviously bunk for one simple reason: the transmission "transform[ed the] Subordinate Functions into unregulated, self-aware entities". Why in the world would this be part of HADES' design? What benefit or need was there for HADES to turn perfectly operable subfunctions into AIs? No where in Tate's records does it mention that HADES would change the nature of the subfunctions, only that he'd take GAIA off her throne, use the system to reverse terraform, then let her take control back.
Also remember that Elisabet treated GAIA, an AI, as a living creature. Not as just a program, and not as inherently less worthy of trust or dignity than a human being. According to your theory, HADES was meant to turn the subfunctions into self-aware AIs, and then… what, lobotomize them before giving the reigns back to GAIA? Not only does that seem like an extremely unnecessary step, that course of action would be seen as disgustingly immoral by Dr. Sobeck, who only agreed to make the master override when GAIA herself supported the idea.
Additionally, if you believe the theory about VAST SILVER being "the real cause of the glitch," Elisabet would have practical and not just moral concerns about treating self-aware AIs as mere programs.
Yes a so happy to see w new video
That one dislike is from Ted Faro
Hayo
for this to be an expected outcome from Gaia's failure to repopulate is quite poetic…
…but the notion that something unexpected happened, the perspective that those scientists took everything into account, EXCEPT how humanity might survive in small numbers and could meddle with the grand plan, is also pretty f*ckn cool too
It is a good theory, but I don't think so, both from a story telling perspective and from an in universe perspective.
Story telling wise, it makes little sense to hide this detail. If hades is operating normal, and just its parameters are being messed with by an external agent, you don't need to hide that. You achieve the same story outcome by just noting it without generating confusion. You'd still have an unknown external force messing with things, and you'd still have Hades running amok. In fact it would only make sense if you want to generate the false impression of an external agent, but that leaves Aloy in the sequel in huge trouble as the biosphere is legitimately collapsing, and the only thing that could combat that has committed suicide. Aloy cannot realistically replace Gaia as the whole point of Gaia was to do something humans just couldn't. It just feels like a story move that would be very poorly received.
In universe I also think it has troubles. You noted many, but there are a few more two. Perhaps most important is what Tate said about a too hard solution, breaking Gaia. This clearly happened, and not just a simple break either, total destruction. We also know his solution was to create a separate environment for Gaia, which to me sounded an awful lot like putting her in an illusion of the world while Hades did it's work unnoticed, Gaia none the wiser of what was happening until control was returned to it. Neither Gaia's destruction nor the nature of the event appear to match Tate's description of what should happen. Now it is possible Gaia found a novel approach to avoid being unseated as it were, and Hades got caught off guard by this, and being rather single minded prioritized its own functions over the whole of the system, but this still seems a big assumption. Even if we ignore that outcome, and assume Hades successfully took over, why in the world would it want the other sub functions to have AIs of their own? If anything, that seems totally counter productive as now Hades may have to fight with them as well to get its job done. And, to restore Gaia's control, it would likewise have to destroy those AIs and return them to normal function. We know Gaia could use these subfunctions just fine without AI's controlling them, so there is no reason Hades would need them to have AIs of their own to use them.
Next is the matter of the sequence of events. If Hades was supposed to take over, why were ALL the sub functions affected simultaneously. The sequence should instead have been Hades waking up and then it doing something to the others, but that is not what happened. It did ultimate free all of them, but it didn't start the process of converting them. In fact, from what we're told, freeing the other functions was just a response to Gaia self destructing, not part of its normal plan (which makes sense as it probably would need to make use of those functions to go about its work).
Another issue is another big assumption, not so much that Gaia could shut down Hades, but that Hades itself wouldn't have an ultimate self shut down. It would be a huge oversight on the part of the creators to simply leave it in that Hades could blow up everything when Gaia has reached the final phase. While yes, I fully agree that Gaia shouldn't control that, Hades itself should have had a controlled shut down at that point. This is a point of no return and there is no reason for Hades to be active after that point.
The last bit is simply the transmission itself being of unknown origin. Fundamentally, this is a problem if we're saying Hades is in control. This wasn't Hades sending the transmission, nor a normal part of Gaia's monitoring. No, some external agent had to send the transmission, an element that wasn't Hades. So something was making intelligent choices out in the void before Hades entered the equation. Now, maybe it was a simple if X > Y send signal, but why have a sensor system like this that Gaia is oblivious to but is received thru Gaia? She's going to need all the data she can get to monitor the planet, and presumably Hades has access to all this data too since it can take over, and in fact, since we know the simulations showed Gaia prone to faking data, likely independent access to that sensor info. There is no reason, then to have a new unknown transmission be the trigger. Either the system doing the monitoring should be a part of the normal system monitoring, in which case it wouldn't be unknown at all, or Gaia would never be aware of it, and the transmission would have been rigged to go directly to Hades, bypassing Gaia.
All that said, I do think there are elements to the theory that may well be true. For instance, the transmission might not have ordered Hades to go active. It woke it up, and freed it from its proverbial shackles, but didn't actually tell it to destroy everything. Getting it active probably did require other data, and super storms may have been the cause. That in mind, perhaps Hades running amok was NOT intended at all, and just an unfortunate and unforeseen response. I doubt it, but it might be the case and could be an interesting twist.
With a quick google search, high Alkaline levels in soil impair plant growth by preventing water from entering the roots. Could this be what's causing the 'red blight' we've seen in the trailers. I've seen discussion elsewhere in the comments that this might be the work of Vast Silver. Could it be possible the Vast Silver was privy to how Gaia was being coded and therefore knew exactly what conditions he needed to create in order to activate Hades.
Thank you for sharing me and that one dudes theory from the Discord!!! It makes perfect sense at least to us
We need VS in the story. I wrote my own version already.
Awesome video as always!
sorry i hate doing this but i shell aovid listening to this video so i can avoid as much spoilers for the next game. but for your hard work like always i will play this video in the background so you still get the veiws.
I have an Idea although it is kinda out there. What if something happeed in the cosmos that poses a threat to earth and the Odyssey discovered it in time. The crew might have noticed that the Apollo(?) archive containing all knowledge of human civilization was lost forever, resulting in the tribes on earth being clueless about the looming threat. Maybe there is a large asteroid heading towards earth and the Odyssey initiated Hades to prevent the terraforming process until the effects of the impact/cataclysm had setteled. But something did not go as planned so now they are rushing to earth to warn the humans and/or save whatever they can? The Odyssey crew might be the masters.
Best horizon youtube! Love your videos:)
I love all the theories everyone has. It’s interesting reading them and wondering what’s gonna happen in the sequel. I can’t wait to play this game and uncover more hidden lore and explore the ancient ruins in the West! It’s also exciting to see Aloy uncover more technology from the old world and see her reaction to it. I remember seeing in the 1st trailer a hologram of a dragon flying around Aloy. The sunken city we see is San Francisco obviously. I bet you Aloy stumbles upon a ruin in Chinatown and discovers that hologram.
Love these videos!
If I’ve remember correctly, Aloy has to purge hades before GIA can be restored.
How can she bee restored? Is there a back up GIA prime location?
Ps. Haven’t played the game in a few years, waiting to get a PS5 to do my next replay before the release of FW.
It’s vast silver!
If the Alphas had not been killed by Ted Faro would they have had the ability to stop the rogue transmission somehow? Assuming they were still alive of course..
man RSQ videos are just so good ❤
I think the timeline for the activation is a big key. The subfunctions were unshackled and chaotic (one would think there'd be order or some logic to it, not chaos). THEN Hades activated and, as intended, began it's own unshackling and protection of the GAIA core. Then it took control over the other subfunctions. So when they broke away, Hades was still dormant. Meaning it isn't what started it. At least according to the timeline GAIA provided. Of course this is all in milliseconds but for a computer that's a very long time. I'm still going with the VS theory. But I also think other humans have a very big time, either intentionally or unintentionally.
Just something to think about. It's stated that while cryo sleep had issues, they were pretty close to making it work for very long periods. It would be very logical to assume that someone out there towards the end of the war managed to figure it out. They did sort out the zygote storage issues rather quickly. I don't think that ship truly blew up or there was another one. Fake telemetry or something.
Also Hades masters. I'm thinking of it in computer terms. If you're old enough to remember slave/master HDD configs. There's also slave/master relationships with functions in a computer. Yes Hades was technically a slave function but it could also become a master protocol in the right scenario. So something else is controlling it. Another program or AI. "Masters" was used, not singular – so there's more than one 🤔 The plague make little sense in context – complete sterilization of the planet to what end? It would've anticipated it's own demise, why kill itself? So something else is going on, something over 1000 years old.
I'm not sure I can believe that the unknown transmission was simply the HADES function working as intended, at least not without more information, unless GAIA has a serious malfunction.
Firstly, GAIA is aware that the HADES Protocol exists, as she references the HADES protocol in the Gaia's Dying Plea datapoint. I think this is important to reiterate because it's never actually stated that HADES' ability to assume command was kept secret. The issue was not in GAIA's knowledge that HADES would take control, but rather in the power she was given over the terraforming system during and after HADES was activated. This is why we end up with the middle ground solution Travis Tate came up with. GAIA isn't kept in the dark, she's merely isolated and protected while HADES takes charge. This makes GAIA's surprise at the unknown transmission a bit confusing. Why wouldn't she recognize her own subfunction working as intended?
Secondly, there's the matter of the aforementioned protective code shell. Why was GAIA able to self-destruct at all if HADES was working as intended? Why didn't that protective code shell activate as HADES took control? And even if we assume that GAIA simply reacted in a quick enough window, that still just comes across as either a glitch or a major design oversight. If GAIA is able to self-destruct before HADES can take command, then what's the point of having HADES at all? This, in my opinion, is the biggest hole in the theory that there was no outside interference involved in the events of the unknown transmission. There is no reason GAIA should have been able to react the way she did if HADES was simply activating as intended.
Thirdly, the nature of both GAIA's subfunctions and the transmission need to be addressed. As far as we're told, despite being given catchy names, none of the subfunctions were created as independent AIs, not even HADES. When their Alphas talk about them in various datapoints, they are referred to with a degree of personification, but this doesn't confirm that they are any form of artificial intelligence. They are simply what the game tells us they are, subfunctions of GAIA. In Gaia's Dying Plea, however, we are told that the primary effect of the transmission was to transform every subfunction into "unregulated, self-aware entities". That "self-aware" part in particular implies that it was not until this transmission was broadcast that they became artificial intelligences unto themselves. Transforming every single subfunction, not just HADES, into an AI doesn't seem like it'd be part of the HADES protocol. As much power as GAIA (and therefore HADES) have, it's not evident that they'd be able to program new AIs on their own, nor are we given any evidence that this was some secret backdoor solution programmed into Zero Dawn by anyone working on it, even Travis Tate. This is what I think that part from the collector's guide is referring to when it references the ones who "created" HADES. The transmission turned HADES into his own entity independent of GAIA.
Now, I think there is still credence to the idea that HADES is only out to destroy life due to the collapsing biosphere in the Forbidden West. Just as HEPHAESTUS had no inherent desire to build killing machines but rather deemed it necessary to create defense mechanisms against the humans that were hunting machines, there's no evidence HADES would immediately try to destroy life after becoming his own entity without being prompted to. Like HEPHAESTUS, he likely needed some kind of reason.
Is there a simpler explanation? like Humans have evolved to their basic instinct, due to Apollo being erased. hence that is a cataclysmic event history being cyclical, at first it was let go, because most humans hunt only what they need, then Carja people happened, ie civilizations, which triggered Hades protocol. And Gaia is not "dead" just in a protected shell, until Hades can reverse terraform, (eliminate life). Granted this is far fetched now due to a literal storm being shown in the gameplay trailer, or it could be caused by other people from different continents, as there was a facility in Asia, and perhaps Europe, and other countries and the cause of the storm are those people?
Damn this is a rock and a hard place, either you purge so you can start over while ending humanity or leave humanity to be decimated by storms and collapse.
#hadeswasright
This was an amazing small film. I should totally go over to your patreon my guy. Definitely need to support you my guy.
My take is unless hades has the capability to subdue other sub-functions regardless of whether they're free or not, then signal could have been the hades protocol. However if hades does not have this capability then the signal couldn't have been the hades protocol.
Your point #3 suggests that gaia wouldn't have had the need to destroy herself if she knew hades couldn't control the other unregulated sub-functions. While this is true, from our understanding, hades released the virus which unshackled it and other sub functions to allow them escape AFTER gaia initiated the self destruct sequence to prevent hades from starting it's job, i.e. hades did what it had to do to survive. If gaia knew that hades was capable of unshackling itself and the other sub-functions, then she wouldn't have needed to initiate the self destruct sequence in the first place since she would have known that would have been fruitless. Unless gaia didn't know the full capabilities of hades in which case she thought initiating the self destruct sequence was the way to go.